A Footballing Declaration of Independence from FIFA

When in the Course of sporting events, it becomes necessary for the stakeholders of football – everyday people – to dissolve the political bands of FIFA which have disconnected them one with another.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Sporting Rights, that among these are a Sporting Life, Sporting Liberty and the pursuit of Sporting Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Sport Governance is instituted among the People, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Sport Governance becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Sport Governance, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Sporting Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Sport Governance bodies long established, like FIFA, should not be changed for light and transient causes; but when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Objects – Robbing the Sport and Elevating Themselves Above It – evinces a design to reduce them under the absolute Despotism of a Havelange or a Blatter, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Sport Governance, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of the People; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Sport Governance. The history of the President, Executive Committee and Congress of FIFA is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over the People. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world:

No Voting by the People / No Consent of the Governed

No Accountability through Voting of National Football Officials to the People

Secret Elections

Secret Pay

Substandard Pay to Women

No version of the Sport for the Differently-Abled

No Commitment to the Pillars of Sport Beyond Commercial Power-and-Performance Sport

No Real-time Transparency of Fund Disbursement

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by silence from FIFA. The Sporting Princes of FIFA – the FIFA President and the FIFA Executive Committee – whose characters are thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, are unfit to be the sporting leaders of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our congressional footballing brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their Congress to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over football. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in Status Quo, in Change Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the United Football Citizens of the World, in General Congress, Assembled Online, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of the Sporting World, solemnly publish and declare, That Football ought to be Free and Independent of FIFA; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the Federation Inernationale de Football Association, and that all political connection between them and FIFA and its National Associations and various governing bodies, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent football citizens, they have full Power to pay men and women equally, value participation sport more than performance sport, contract and establish commerce with entities who transparently support democratic distribution of football resources with an eye toward the most vulnerable, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent football citizens may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, I begin by pledging to each of you my Sporting Life, my Sporting Fortune and my sacred Honor.

—– Mel Brennan

Football – or soccer – is our sport. It is a global phenomenon. It is democratic in its distribution, but no in its governance. That is, football is organically found in every corner of the globe, played by all kinds of people; however its leadership is a narrow slice of those people, and its governance doesn’t include those people at all. We are citizens of no nation, football constituents with no Congress. We make up everything that matters about the beautiful game, but have zero say in it.

For those of us around the world who see football as the most democratic form of sporting expression in the history of the world, that type of disenfranchisement is intolerable. And as media outlets ramp up their coverage of the FIFA “election,” the gap between what happens at that event and what football’s citizens need is ever widening.

FIFA has shown at every turn that they cannot be reformed. Won’t you commit to, and share, the above Declaration?